🔖 Read 2024: The Year of the Personal Website by Matthias Ott.

How about, from now on, we make every year the year of the personal website – and make the internet human, creative, personal, and weird again?

I’m down.

Responding to this post on gift-giving:

For me, the sweet spot for a gift is when you can use it to show that you’ve paid attention to what the person needs or cares about. Not because you want to be smug or feel good about yourself, but because as the receiver of a gift, it feels good to be seen.

Most years, I only give gifts to family, which certainly makes this easier. In recent years, I also pick an annual formula, for example, everyone gets a book or everyone gets a T-shirt.

This year, everyone got a donation to something they care about plus a token to unwrap.

• My brother got patronage of Defunctland and a Defunctland brochure.
• My sister got a symbolic adoption of a red panda through the World Wildlife Fund and a DVD of the Spirited Away stage show.
• My brother-in-law got a donation to the Order of the Good Death and an occult-themed cocktail recipe book.
• My mother got a donation to the American Cancer Society and a T-shirt with a meme she likes on it.
• My father got a manatee adoption from the Save the Manatee club and a Jeopardy! card game.

Each of these gifts says:

1. I noticed something that’s important to you.
2. I noticed something you enjoy.

There’s no perfect formula for gift giving, but I find using it as an opportunity to say “I see you” is a useful principle.

🍿 Watched Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story.

A fascinating documentary about a fascinating person.

Finished reading: For Never & Always by Helena Greer 📚

I love it so much. Finished it in under 48 hours. Helena Greer has given us a lovely place in Carrigan’s Christmasland and a host of delightful people to populate it. I keep seeing different bits of myself in each of her characters and it makes me happy. Highly recommend.

It is not humanly possible for Helena Greer to write fast enough to meet my desire for Carrigan’s content. It’s generous of her to give us a book a year. Yet I’d read however many she wrote as quickly as I could.

Me: I started this book last night and read only one chapter before bed. Now I’m on page 214.
W: Sounds like my wife.
📚

Finished reading: How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow 📚

Lovely and sweet. Made me cry when the main character’s mom really shows up for her. Also kinda makes me want to travel to DC.

📚🗨️ “I want to live my life being irrationally hopeful. Loving people and fish and cities with my whole heart.” Jake Maia Arlow, How to Excavate a Heart

Yesterday my mom, who in April 2022 was told she would probably never walk again, walked (with a walker and people around to spot her) up my front steps, into my house, and over to the couch. This is the result of months of hard work and physical therapy. ♥️

🍿 Watched Hats Off to Christmas.

This is the most paradigmatic Hallmark Christmas movie. It has everything:

• a struggling small business
• a suit guy
• who is going back to his small hometown after life in the big city
• a wheelchair-riding moppet
• who miraculously recovers from the injury that made him need a wheelchair
• a woman being stupid because of a conversation she eavesdropped on
• who is a young widow
• two chaste kisses
• a happy ending

Is it a good movie? No. But is it a laughably bad movie? No. Haylie Duff is incredibly winning and the reason I kept watching. Her chemistry with her costar is non-existent but she’s so cute, I didn’t care.